Edirne, The Border, some Stone Mushrooms

After Gallipoli I headed back up the peninsula and then north towards the town of Edirne. It was another day riding along highways over hills and then along mostly straight roads. Edirne is another quite nice Turkish border town, like Erzurum in the East. I navigated to a small street filled with hotels and ended up at the Tuna Hotel for 65lira/night (10 lira off because I hesitated after he said 75).

Edirne used to be the Ottoman capital for a while. It has some impressive old buildings, and a couple of old covered markets (but now selling the same crap as every other part of the planet). But I mostly took photos of the two big mosques in town.

Wonky view of Üç Şerefeli Mosque. Each minaret is built in a different style, the name comes from the one minaret there with three balconies.

Inside the courtyard.

Selimiye Mosque the larger and more famous mosque in Edirne. I've just learnt it has the highest minarets in Turkey at 70.9 meters!

The next morning I had packed up all my gear and made sure I had all of my paperwork in order before heading to the border with Bulgaria. I had also tried to time my refuelling for the Bulgarian side but I was a little too effective and hit reserve while still in Turkey. Not knowing where to get money or fuel in Bulgaria I put in another five litres of some of the most expensive fuel money can buy so I would make it to the cheaper fuel zone (although, not much cheaper it seems).

Once at the border the process was quite simple. Hand passport to some guy in a booth, he stamps me out of Turkey, ride to the next window and they type the number plate of my bike into a computer and that's it. I'm out of Turkey. Possibly a whole minute to get out of the country.

On the Bulgarian side I went through the EU lanes with my shiny UK passport, they just looked at it to checked I was the one in the photo and sent me to the next booth, no stamps needed here for EU passports. On to customs who were checking through the luggage in a few cars, one officer came over and asked if I had anything to declare, which I said no and then I was waved on. This was exceedingly simple, what's going on. The next booth is for the road toll/tax that all vehicles need to pay, I had read something that motorbikes were exempt but I couldn't remember exactly. After waiting in line for a while eventually a guy in the booth came out and made me go around all the cars and past the booth. Well I guess I don't have to pay it then. There was one other booth on the way out and they just waved me past too.

I stopped after the last gate to put my helmet and gloves back on and wonder why this only took 20 minutes. I kept thinking I'd hit a bigger fence further up the road where they would take a lot longer with the documentation, but no, I was in. That was all there was to it. I know I'm missing insurance but I'm hoping to sort that out at the motosapiens camp site who also offer the green card insurance for the rest of Europe too.

With the border crossed I headed into the nearest town to fine an ATM to get some local money. After I discovered the ATM it was back on the highway where I found a Shell service station with a McDonalds in it. I refuelled the bike, ate some bacon for the first time in a long time, and abused the free WiFi before moving on to my next stop at the stone mushrooms of Beli Plast. One of the two things I had noted down to look at in Bulgaria.

Donkey.

Beli Plast down there. This is from up on the hill where the stone mushrooms are.

This is them. A small grouping of these rock formations beside the road.

Another angle.

A brain looking one.

More shrooms.

All of the mushrooms from the most mushroomy looking group.

Shroom.

I got back on the main highway after getting lost in Haskovo and then headed to Plovdiv where I'd stay and explore Bulgaria's second biggest city for a couple of nights.

Gallipoli

Finally I'm able to upload some photos from Gallipoli (Bulgaria being one of the best countries in terms of internet access. Also, I'm in Bulgaria now).

I left Drew and the BrokenVespa(tm) in Istanbul a few days ago. After Gallipoli we were going to head in separate directions, me heading north through Bulgaria and Romania and Drew heading through Greece, possibly to Italy. I was bored with Istanbul, I had seen enough of the city and I had also seen my bank account and then decided it was time to move on, and quickly. Drew still had a few things to do in Istanbul (like Unbrokening(tm) the BrokenVespa(tm)) so he was a few days behind my leaving. So maybe it won't be until London where I'll see the little red Vespa again, most probably with new welds and pulling up on the back of a truck...

The ride to Gallipoli is a moderately boring one. Starting with crossing the Bosphorus Bridge to the side that has a small sign that says "Welcome to Europe". I'm sure people doing that journey every day get sick of that sign. The road through Istanbul flows OK, a bit like the traffic in Melbourne heading in or out of the city and it's not until the second/first/other airport of Istanbul that the traffic finally drops off. There were police EVERYWHERE controlling traffic when I went through. Most entrances to the highway had police standing there starting/stopping traffic, which in Brisbane is a job relegated to traffic lights. Once closer to the peninsula there are options to stray off the main road and go through smaller villages where you can share the road with tractors and cow poop. The landscape does change to something that looks very Victoria, possibly like Mornington Peninsula which is what someone who had something to do with the Anzac Cove monuments said.

I had tried to find some camp grounds via the interwebs around Gallipoli where I could save some money for a few nights while I explore the place. My searching had revealed Hotel Kum which said it offers a large camp ground, a restaurant and a shop, this sounded like exactly what I wanted. Others had just found a spare patch of land to camp so that was an option too, but with my limited space for food I'd rather be somewhere with a shop at least. Once I arrived at Hotel Kum I saw the large block of land reserved for "camping" (yes, the quotes become important). I went down the driveway where it looked like a bunch of the staff were sitting around. One of them got up and came over and I asked "Camping?" and he said "Camping, no tent". Confused I asked what he meant by "no tent", even offering to set up my own tent like I had intended. But no, this "camping site" did not allow tents. It seems the word "camping" gained a very specific localized definition where only people in a 200 meter radius of this point would understand. I later found out they offered rooms but they didn't try and sell one to me then. They mentioned there was camping 500 meters down the road back towards the info center.  

I tried this other camping place next, greeted by a large security fence and a guards office. While I was trying to figure out if I was in the right place I saw a few people enter and exit via the gate, which is important later. So I get off the bike and try and find someone in the office and ask about camping, to which they reply there is no camping because it is the off season. Right. Got it. Summer in Turkey is the off season for camping especially with this traffic in and out, I expect this place to be filled during the winter months. So I told him that someone else had directed me here and then he said there was another camp ground 500 meters up the road, curiously the same distance that the previous person had given me.

Again I travelled up to the next site. This one turned out to be a large picnic ground with a security gate  over the road in but with parking available on the other side of the main road through the park. I found someone who spoke very limited English and learnt that camping there cost 25 lira a night... That's a lot. I contemplated it for a while but with the free(not) wifi and the moderately nice scenery and the distance from the nearest town I decided to wear the expense and stay the night. After setting up my tent I found out they also charge 1lira every time you want to use the toilets, luckily you can negotiate the turnstile without paying. Also because of the language barrier I had to speak to a person on the phone who would translate for me, but this person spoke worse English than the people running the place. Some Turkish people there for a picnic could speak English and translated a few times for me but I think this was done under duress. And I totally recognise that I should have learnt some basic Turkish before I sound like I'm complaining that no one can speak to me...

My camp site for the night.

The beach infront of the camp site...

In the evening another motorbike turned up and enquired about camping. This was Simon, another Australian who has been travelling Europe on a UK registered Africa Twin. He's going as far as he can without the need for a Carnet, and in this part of the world that means the Iranian border. He had enquired about the price for camping but it was too much for his budget and was going to find a spot off the road to sleep for the night.

In the morning I packed up camp and headed off to look around this area. And a little north of the camping/picnic ground where I had stayed I saw Simon's bike again, he wasn't next to it so I assume his was off swimming or walking or something. I headed to the northern most grave sites to look around.

I went to the northernmost grave site which was still within the protected area. In this site was a small wooden gate and about 50 graves. Most of the grave markers started with "Believed to be buried here" which is a trend that continued for most of the other sites I visited. There were a few markers that did not have that phrase but the majority had it. Most of these sites had a mix of Australia and and New Zealand soldiers, depending on what the site was for, but I did see some British graves in there too. Now that I think back to it I don't remember seeing any Indian graves, who were also here as part of the allied forces (but lacking very many mentions in the signs).

Near the Beach grave site, just south of Anzac Cove.

Just north of Anzac Cove, this is the memorial site, actually located on North Beach.

Actual Anzac Cove. Today they were recovering a car that had gone over the edge, you can see the skid marks on the left of the photo where it went off.

Between the memorial site and Anzac Cove is the Ari Burnu grave site. In this one there are less graves starting with "Believed to be buried here"

From the southern end of Anzac Cove. Rolled car in view and looking very different to 1915.

The wreath laid at Lone Pine.

The sign, the lone pine at lone pine, and the monument at the rear.  I tried to think of Australian last names of people I know that might be here I could only think of one, which I found. Everyone else I know has a very generic name...

And that's where the Australian Tour ends. Further along the one way road are mostly Turkish monuments which I didn't stop at too often because I couldn't read many of them. Some had English translations, but they always referred to the Anzac/British forces as "The Enemy" which seemed a tad odd. And like everywhere else in Turkey most hills have Turkish flags on them, this also seemed a tad odd.

Turkish trenches along the top of the hills just near Lone Pine. Lots of Turkish tour groups up here.

Uhhh... I guess I should stand here for long.

After exploring that area I went over to the Dardanelles to see what they were all fighting for. 

The bunkers at Kilitbahir, the narrowest part of the Dardanelles, with Çanakkale on the other side.

More bunkers.

Looking across to Çanakkale.

 At this point I was meant to go down to the southern part of the peninsula to see where a majority of the British forces had landed. But after an uncomfortable nights sleep and potential sickness I headed back to Eceabat where I ended up at Hotel Boss 2 (very good by the way) for only double what I had paid to camp the previous night. So that ended my Gallipoli tour. 

Istanbul!

Here are some photos from Istanbul, to go with that timelapse, and the bad impression of Istanbul Modern!

After the rain of the previous days, and after repairing the bearing on my bike, we set off on the short ride to Istanbul. On the way we stopped at the Istanbul Park Formula 1 circuit, which looks run down and all the vegetation overgrown probably because it is not used any more. We couldn't get in and could only see the track from the roads that went past. After that we followed the confusing roads back to the D100, which is the free road in to Istanbul, all others were marked as toll roads, and anything heading north-south from this area was a toll road. After much looping about we managed to get on one of the toll roads we knew didn't have a toll at that point and back on the D100. The traffic was fine and nothing as bad as what people had said it would be like. Sure it gets stopped in places, but we were expecting Delhi and instead got [insert Australian city of choice here].

We went to a group of motorbike shops on the Asian side first, if we crossed over to the European side then on the way back we'd have to pay a toll, and we didn't have to toll card to do that. While at one of the shops they mentioned there was cheap accommodation in the area, I checked on wikitravel and found a hotel that had been reviewed not far from where we were. We were told it's better to stay on this side for cheaper accommodation and food, and we found out later that is correct.  We ended up at Hotel Zirve. The bike is parked on the street, but so far there hasn't been a problem. Just like in Nepal where it took an entire week for someone to steal my fuel, I guess.

A kebab place near the hotel.

After a day trying to find more motorbike shops for parts I went over to the Old City of Istanbul where a lot of the sites are located. I headed to the Blue Mosque first because that's the only building I'd heard about before.

The blue mosque.

While crossing this square I had the usual tout behaviour of someone walking next to me asking where I'm from, etc etc etc etc. I got bored of his questions and told him I'd been to India and he wasn't at their level yet. He then told me he was selling carpets, and I said that was great, but I don't want one and  didn't have a house to put it in. Then he asked why I would even come to Istanbul... Well, not for carpet? He got disinterested and said something else and then said "I kill you" and stopped walking, to which I laughed, which he heard as me saying something else and he called out "What did you say!". I informed him that he just threatened to kill me, and that I should probably be the angry one.

Bad panorama from inside the courtyard of the blue mosque!

Please don't sit here...

Lots of people waiting around. The mosque was closed for prayers and wouldn't open for a few hours. There were lots of people waiting.

After the blue mosque I headed over to the other side of the square to the Hagia Sofia which I knew nothing about and no one has ever told me anything about it before :D

Here it is.

There's a big line up for this one and you have to go through security to get in, but over at the blue mosque there's no security. Odd. The ticket into this one is 25 lira too.

A tablet inside.

Inside, it's big in here. Pretty impressive.

A hand print one of the guides was pointing out to someone else.

It used to be a Christian building, but has been converted into a mosque,

The walkway to the upper floor.

A photo from up here. It's still quite big in here.

Looking back to the blue mosque again.

After that I wandered around and next to these two buildings.

Obelisk of Theodosius, been here since 390AD, but is a lot older than that (though suspiciously restored looking)

The first gardens of the palace.

The gateway to the second gardens of the palace.

The fourth gardens!

Inside the treasury of the palace are lots of people, but behind those people are displays of jewellery from the royalty here. Lots of gold, lots of diamonds and emeralds. The diamonds were all unpolished, but there was one very large one there but not quite pink panther size... There were lots of different thrones on display for different uses, one made of gold.

I didn't go into the Haram, because there was an extra ticket, and there was a very long line of people.

This is part of the fourth garden area, where all the libraries and rooms celebrating victories are.

A library.

The next day I went to look at Basilica Cistern. Apparently this was rediscovered when locals could draw water up from the basements, sometimes with fish in the buckets. Then then discovered this was the source.

Inside.

More inside.

One of the medusa heads supporting a column.

More reflected columns.

I went over to the Museum of Archaeology to have a look around.

The main building.

Just next to the entrance is a smaller building for ancient displays. This one had a mummy in it from Eqypt, and similar items. The oldest thing in there was from 2700BC, that's quite old.

Inside the main building, sarcophagusesesesesi. Everywhere.

Some of the carvings on a rather large sarcophagus.

There were so many displays in this building. Too many. I got lost and starting passing over most of it.

Next day, time to see more things. First thing was the Galata Bridge.

I was going to stop here and get a drink or eat something, but the touts are really pushy. One even grabbed onto my arm as I walked past. I don't think I'll be supporting that, lots of other people were though.

Galata Tower

The tower was interesting. I was expecting stairs in an old building like this, but there are two elevators, and a cafe, restaurant and nightclub at the top.

Broken panorama of the old city area. I accidentally joined two different sets here, but it still works, just not in the foreground.

Looking further towards the new city.

A road.

A lonnnnnnng mall with a tramway through it.

And thanks to beanhunter, I found kronotrop on a street just off this area. Finally some decent coffee since sending my swiss gold filter back to Melbourne!

French street. Grabby touts along here.

How they tow cars in Istanbul.

Not much else left to see in Istanbul. Should be moving on to Gallipoli for a night or two and then crossing into Greece or Bulgaria after that.